Food Network Star's Recipe for Murder

by Michael Y. Park

on 12/16/10 at 09:00 AM

Onetime Food Network and Discovery Health Network personality Juan-Carlos Cruz was sentenced to nine years in the slammer Monday for soliciting the murder of his wife. It was a plea agreement, and he's expected to serve about half of his sentence because no actual violent crime took place.

It's a dramatic fall from grace for the onetime TV star (Calorie Commando, Weighing In, Body Challenge 3) and cookbook author (The Calorie Countdown Cookbook, The Love Diet). Cruz, a former pastry chef at the Hotel Bel Air in L.A., approached homeless men in southern California about "cutting a woman's throat" for $1,000. He provided security codes for his and his wife's Westwood, Calif., home, treats for their dogs (whom he insisted not be harmed), and suggested that his wife, Jennifer Campbell, be strangled with pantyhose.

"If it ends up bloody, that's fine," he told the men. "But I prefer not to have a mess."

Unfortunately for Cruz, the men who actually agreed to it happened to be working with police.

Officials haven't released information about Cruz's motives, but according to new information released Tuesday, Cruz said that his wife had become depressed about her inability to conceive and the debt their failed fertility treatments put them in, but couldn't take her own life because of her devout Catholicism. Cruz considered it a mercy killing, and said he also considered killing himself at one point. Campbell hasn't commented on the case. At the sentencing Monday, Cruz winked and smiled at his would-be victim.